Christmas

The story

Every year on a Saturday morning before Christmas our neighborhood is treated to the strains of Santa Clause is Coming to Town blaring over the loudspeaker of a vintage fire truck with SANTA CLAUS sitting on top! It’s a sweet tradition.

Product/technique notes

I created this layout with products from the Echo Park Tis the Season collection and American Crafts Deck The Halls Joyful die-cuts. I also followed this sketch from Let’s Get Sketchy:

Today Stuck?! Sketches launches our second challenge of December! Grab the sketch and play along for prizes from Creative Embellishments and Scrapbook Nerd.

The story

One of our family holiday traditions that I cherish was having Daddy select and read a Christmas story to us. He sat in a comfy chair, and we all piled near him on the couch to listen. It usually took a few nights to complete one, and he always tried to time it so the last installment fell on Christmas Eve.

Over the years we heard some delightful tales. But our favorite by far was The Melodeon by Glendon Swarthout. The description of this book on Amazon is so simple:

A youngster relates how his grandparents donated a valuable family heirloom, their melodeon, to the church in an unselfish act of giving one Christmas during the Depression when they had nothing to give each other.

The story is so beautifully told, detailed, and emotional that it made our hearts swell. We felt we were with them in the deep cold of winter during the Depression. And the feelings it evoked have stayed with me all these years.

Product/technique notes

I die cut diamonds from the Pink Paislee Snow Village 6×6 paper pad, inked the edges with iced spruce distress ink, and placed them against a background paper from the Bo Bunny Christmas Collage collection. The die cuts are from both the Snow Village and Simple Stories Classic Christmas collections. To create a cut file for the title, I found an image of the book cover and traced it in the Silhouette software.

Before the Christmas season and the year come to an end I thought I would share my 2016 Christmas card design. I did some stamping, heat embossing, and Distress Ink stippling to create these, and the idea for how to make them came from Jennifer McGuire’s Easy Distress Inking post.

You blend each color of ink with shimmer spray and stipple it all over the watercolor paper with your fingers to create this colorful faux granite effect. It was fun (and time consuming)! I made four styles and used four or five ink colors on each.

Here’s a close-up shot so you can see all the shimmer that covered each card. That gorgeous Christmas tree stamp is from Martha Stewart.

My MISTI came in so handy for the whole process this year. Here is my setup as I stamped all the inside greetings before adhering the watercolor panels (while watching other crafters making cards on YouTube).

I decided to bake for my mom and bro this year because I know they no longer take part in this holiday tradition, and I wanted to send them some Christmas cheer. So I made peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies, cracker candy, and caramel apple fudge and packaged it all up with some mulling spices for cider. Then I made this card to tuck in with it all and sent it on its merry way.

Here is a closeup shot so you can see the glitter on the berries.

Product/technique notes

The gorgeous poinsettia stamp is by Stampendous, and I enjoyed coloring it with Copic markers. The sentiment stamp is by Hero Arts. The patterned papers are from the American Crafts 6×6 Kringle & CO pad.

The story

Spenser and I shared many kisses, but none were as magical as this one under the mistletoe (Christmas 1992). 😉

Product/technique notes

The background patterned paper is from Echo Park’s Merry Christmas collection, and the other patterns are from Heidi Swapp’s Believe collection and American Craft’s Wish List 6×6 paper pad. The embellishments are from Pink Paislee’s Yuletide (the tags) and American Crafts (the Santa clothespin). The gift diecut I used behind the photos is from Silhouette. I wish you could see better in the photo that I brushed Wink of Stella clear glitter pen all over the ribbon top on it. It looks beautiful IRL.